Climate resilience planning is only as good as the data that informs it. For decades, African governments and development organisations have relied on coarse national-level statistics that mask enormous local variation. A district may be classified as "food secure" nationally while specific sub-counties experience acute drought stress. Geospatial analytics closes this gap — turning satellite data, sensor readings, and field surveys into spatially explicit, decision-ready intelligence.
Uganda Drought Observatory: GIS at National Scale
The Uganda Drought Observatory, developed by Rosewill Bome Technologies with UN food security agency support, integrates the Combined Drought Index — a composite of satellite-derived vegetation, soil moisture, and precipitation anomaly data — into a national observatory dashboard. District-level drought severity maps are updated weekly and made available to the Ministry of Agriculture, water resource managers, and disaster management officials. For the first time, early-warning signals are geographically precise enough to trigger targeted livestock de-stocking interventions in specific sub-counties rather than broad regional advisories.
Weekly satellite-derived drought severity maps at sub-district level
Automated SMS alerts to local extension officers when thresholds are crossed
Integration with UN food security monitoring frameworks
Historical drought pattern analysis for long-range climate adaptation planning
Open API enabling integration with national disaster management platforms
Scaling Across the Horn of Africa
The BREFONS programme across six Horn of Africa countries relies on GIS-enabled dashboards to track food security indicators at the woreda (district) level across Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan, Djibouti, Uganda, and Kenya simultaneously. Programme managers at the commissioning continental development bank can drill down from a six-country overview to a single intervention site in minutes — a capability that was impossible with pre-digital reporting systems. This spatial intelligence is not just about knowing where the problem is. It is about knowing where to act, how to prioritise, and how to account for the results.